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User blog:Stanley Orr/IZ:TDM! Update (and exciting news)
Hey there, all! Long time, no see. Kinda. Anyway, it's been a while since I've done an update, so - here ya go - here's an update! Yay! - PROJECT STATUS - Alright, so, currently, things aren't going as smoothly as I want them to. I think there are areas we could use more help in, and pick up the pace with. But as far as all else goes, things are on a pretty good trajectory. - Voice acting is great. We only have two characters left - ZIM and Purple - and they've only got Act III left in their lines. So that's good. As soon as all lines of dialogue are recorded, I'll be getting to work editing them together for use in the final product. That will be great. - Concept art is one of the areas we're lagging in. It's unfortunate, but the fact remains that concept art takes a lot of effort, and - generally speaking - volunteers do need constant reminders to ensure work gets done. Now, don't misunderstand me - this is not a jab at anyone, it's a mere statement of fact. If I could pay people in money, I would, because that ensures a more fastidious job. As it is, though, I find that I haven't gotten concept art in over a week, and that's mainly because I haven't poked, prodded, and reminded the few concept artists I have working that we need stuff done. So, that's something that needs to be taken care of. - Another thing currently going on is test animations for alternate animation styles. I'll be honest, guys, traditional 2D animation is not easy. It's hard, challenging, and time-consuming as is. The only way we'll be able to pull it off for a full-length feature film is with a crew of many animators, but that requires supervision, and I shudder to think of the way volunteers could manage to mess up shots, angles, and continuity simply by fact that I'm inexperienced as a director. To help, I'm experimenting with different animation styles which we will show at a later date. If all goes well, we'll demonstrate an accurate representation of how these different items could work to make a good animation in spite of it being a different style. - STORYBOARDING - Storyboarding is going to be interesting, to say the least. On one hand, I have an idiotic urge to do everything myself ("if you want it done right" and all that), but - on the other hand - I'm sane, and know that I cannot do it all on my own. Hence, I need help. - I'm planning to grab as many storyboard artists as I can (ideally eight to eleven members), and have us divy up scenes amongst ourselves based off of rough thumbnails. The storyboards will be refined, accurate, and work well. The only hangup is vision - I don't think many will share the same one I have, and I do not want to overstep a boundary and restrict their creativity. It will be a challenge to strike a balance there, but - hopefully - making a video dedicated to what I'm expecting in storyboards will alleviate this problem. - As for thumbnails, those will need a video as well. You can think of them as rough storyboards, and I would love to do them all by myself, but - in the interest of saving time and keeping the project moved along - I'm going to start staggering the workload (i.e. focuisng all efforts on one sequence at a time) so that actual progress is made (at least up to a finalized animatic). - IZ:TDM! AUDIO DRAMA - I intend to release an audio-only version of IZ:TDM! (complete with a deliberately cheesy narrator) alongside the animated version. There are two reasons for this. - First of all, if someone can't accesss YouTube videos easily, or if they're blind, or whatever the reason is, they can still enjoy the doomy madness via an audiodrama that I can be working on in my spare time. - Secondly, if the animation crashes and burns, well, this is a good backup plan. I'm an inexperienced director, after all, and so it's good to have a gameplan in place. - 1,000 SUBSCRIBERS - Alright, this is it! This is the super exciting thing I wanted to talk about: ''IZ:TDM! ''has reached over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube! I'm so super pumped for this, guys! You have no idea! :D Are a sizeable chunk spambots and content creators just subscribing to random channels in hopes to get more attention? Yes, very likely, but who cares? They helped get the number up that high, so I'm happy! ^_^ This is exciting for me, because it feels vindictive, in a way. It feels like I finally have a solidified base of supporters out saying "yes, we want an IZ finale, and we like the approach you're taking." To me, that's profoundly important, as it helps me mentally latch onto this. Every time something like this happens - be it a nice new comment, or a new volunteer, or (as here) a milestone of some sort - I feel more energy come in and pump me up for the project. - To celebrate it, I fully intend to do a livestream sometime in the future, where I answer questions about IZ:TDM! and prove my utter inept n00bishness with livestreaming tech. Should be great. Category:Blog posts